*Disclaimer: I received this wine as a sample to participate in a Wines of Chile Tasting

Have I mentioned lately how much fun the Wines of Chile Tastings are? If I haven’t, I should. The lovely PR people for the Wines of Chile gather a herd of cats [wine bloggers], send us all wine, a corkscrew, and something else fun from Chile and then let us video taste with the winemakers from Chile. It is just about the coolest thing I get to do as a wine blogger. I look forward to these tastings every time. This wine comes from a tasting I participated in back in late October. Again, I’m tardy, but better late than never? One of the wines was this 2006 Maquis Lien. It clocked in at 14.5% alcohol by volume, had a real cork closure, and retails for $19. The wine is a blend of 42% Syrah, 30% Carmenere, 12% Cabernet Franc, 9% Petite Verdot, and 7% Malbec.

On the nose I found plum, smoke, meat, spice, pepper, bubblegum, a green note, mint, and chocolate. The bubblegum is something I found on several of the wines in this tasting, all of which had Petite Verdot in common, making me wonder if the Petite Verdot lent that characteristic to the wine. In the mouth I got black cherry, back plum, lots and lots of tannins, pepper, blueberry, meat, chocolate, and earth. I found it to be darker on the palate than I had anticipated and the tannins made me think running this through a decanter would be a good bet.